Verbal strategies and nonverbal cues in school‐age children with and without specific language impairment (SLI)

Abstract

Background Considerable evidence suggests that performance across a variety of cognitive tasks is effectively supported by the use of verbal and nonverbal strategies. Studies exploring the usefulness of such strategies in children with specific language impairment (SLI) are scarce and report inconsistent findings. Aim The present study examined effects of induced labelling and auditory cues on the performance of children with and without SLI during a categorization task. Methods & Procedures Sixty-six school-age children (22 with SLI, 22 age-matched controls, 22 language-matched controls) completed three versions of a computer-based categorization task: one baseline, one requiring overt labelling, and one with auditory cues (tones) on randomized trial blocks. Outcomes & Results Labelling had no effect on performance for typically developing children but resulted in lower accuracy and longer reaction time in children with SLI. The presence of tones had no effect on accuracy but resulted in faster reaction time and post-error slowing across groups. Conclusions & Implications Verbal strategy use was ineffective for typically developing children and negatively affected children with SLI. All children showed faster performance and increased performance monitoring as a result of tones. Overall, effects of strategy use in children appear to vary based on task demands, strategy domain, age, and language ability. Results suggest that children with SLI may benefit from auditory cues in their clinical intervention but that further research is needed to determine when and how verbal strategies might similarly support performance in this population.

Applying an Integrative Framework of Executive Function to Preschoolers With Specific Language Impairment

“…Lidstone, Meins, and Fernyhough (2012) reported that articulatory suppression during a planning task affected children with and without SLI equally, suggesting that children with SLI also use language to mediate their executive function behavior. In contrast, other research has reported that explicitly instructing children with SLI to use language during task performance impedes their performance (Eichorn, Marton, Campanelli, & Scheuer, 2014). Our own data can speak to this relationship as there are significant positive correlations between some of the executive function tasks and SPELT-P 2 and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition standard scores in both the typically developing and SLI groups (see Appendix).…”

“…It may be the case that impaired language is leading to deficits in executive function. For example, children with SLI may be less efficient in using language to mediate their responding on executive function tasks (Eichorn et al, 2014). As an alternative, children's language impairment may be caused, or at lease exacerbated, by their underlying executive function difficulties.…”

Executive Function in SLI: Recent Advances and Future Directions

“…The labeling condition resulted in no change in accuracy for the typical children, but led to reduced accuracy among children with SLI. Thus, contrary to findings with typically developing children [39, 40], using language as a task strategy may actually be detrimental for children with SLI [65]. …”

“…Verbal strategy use in SLI was also examined by Eichon, Marton, Campanelli, and Scheuer [65] by comparing performance on a verbal categorization task in a baseline condition to a condition in which children were instructed to label the category aloud. Children with SLI were less accurate than age-matched typical peers in both the baseline and labeling conditions, indicating a relative deficit in categorization.…”

The Relationship Between Language and Planning in Children With Language Impairment

“…Nonlinguistic strategy use may result in poorer performance for children with SLI relative to TD peers in these contexts. On the other hand, capitalizing on the ability to alternate between strategies may support performance on tasks that recruit the visuospatial domain more so than the verbal domain, and prior work suggests that verbal cues may be detrimental to performance for children with SLI under certain task demands (Eichorn et al, 2014;Marton et al, 2014). According to the HCSM, language-based selfreflection provides the opportunity to weigh alternative responses against the habitual response to a task.…”